Health

Kansas court to review pair of unenforced abortion laws

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TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas’ highest court is considering whether the state can restrict how doctors end second-trimester pregnancies or impose extra health and safety rules for abortion providers after a decisive statewide vote last year confirming that the state constitution protects abortion rights.

The state Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Monday from attorneys for the state and abortion providers in two lawsuits. One challenges a 2015 law banning a common second-trimester abortion procedure, and the other challenges a 2011 law that regulates abortion providers more strictly than other health care providers. Legal challenges have blocked both laws from being enforced.

The U.S. Supreme Court declared in June 2022 that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t protect abortion rights and that states can ban abortion, but the Kansas court ruled in 2019 that access to abortion is a “fundamental” right under the state constitution. That led the Republican-controlled Legislature to put a proposed amendment on last August’s ballot asking voters whether to lift that constitutional protection, which would have allowed lawmakers to greatly restrict or ban abortion. Voters soundly rejected the measure, though.

Kansas allows most abortions up until the 22nd week of pregnancy, attracting patients from other states with bans, most notably Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. Abortion opponents fear that Kansas courts will overturn many of the restrictions imposed over the past 30 years. But they also see the two cases before the state’s highest court as an opportunity for its seven justices to reconsider the 2019 decision or at least narrow its scope.

“There’s no way to know what they’re going to do, but quite frankly, I think there’s a reason for them to back off,” Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican who opposes abortion rights, said before the hearings.

The court will likely take months to issue rulings.

Among Republican-leaning states, Kansas is an outlier in preserving abortion access, in part because the state’s abortion opponents preferred making year-by-year incremental changes prior to last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

However, the state still forces patients to wait 24 hours before getting an abortion, requires minors to get parental consent, spells out what patients must be told in writing beforehand and even mandates that the information for patients be printed in 12-point Times New Roman type.

Three members of the court’s 6-1 majority…

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